To Forget
by thechosenstarfish
Summary: Giles meets someone at LAX when leaving for England. Buffy season 6, post Tabula RasaAngel season 3, post Billy.


Rating: PG  
Timeline: Buffy season 6, post Tabula Rasa/Angel season 3, post Billy (an insertion into canon that does not shuffle things about too much)  
Blurb: Giles meets someone at LAX when leaving for England  
Disclaimer – I own none of the Joss-y/Mutant Enemy goodness. I am just borrowing to make a scene and amuse myself, and maybe a few others.

Luggage wheels and clopping shuffle of travelers' feet surrounded him, and it took his last teaspoon of willpower to not stop in the middle. Stop and sit down in the crowd, and let people brush past him, and forget.

Lose the ticket stabbing him the chest. The way it scratched in his breast pocket with every heavy step. Lose the glasses, the clarity.

The want to blur things around him was growing. He took them off to clean with a white handkerchief, and almost threw them underneath the sneakered feet of a heavy mother, relishing in the sensory images of the lenses crackling against rubber and faux marble floor.

He had four hours until take off. Departure. Flight away from the States. Four hours to forget. LAX was a good place to start. Anonymity felt good. Maybe even better than forgetting what you are, who you were... there. Not as good as memory erasure among seven of your... comrades, no, friends... family.

The small bar on his left looked like it was carved out of a men's club, and placed into the sterility of the airport. Dark wood and deep green accents would let him pretend at ease.

Lose the annoyingly affectionate sun of California. Lose the small main street of stores. Lose that bloody old cash register and the ledgers and invoices. Lose the inventory of what he was leaving.

He ordered a dark pint and scanned the bar for a corner. A hovel to hide. Underneath a grimy table would even do.

But there was someone at his table. The table that was born from wood to be the brooding hiding table. A man slumped over a glass of amber and ice, cupping it like the warmth would permeate into his hands. His glasses rested, crossed on the table. The need to blur  
was universal. Or at least British.

"Wesley?"

The man looked up, rough face looking newly worn, unnatural. Squinting, he straightened up, playing at politeness, placing glasses on his face, blue eyes trying to focus. He made a motion to stand.

"Giles, I–"

Giles motioned him down with his hand and reached for a stray chair. "May I?"

"Yes. Erm... yes. Please do."

Watchers always found him in bars, Wesley thought. Just want to have a drink, smooth over things, with a vice, and they appear. Reminder of what was to be.

"I forgot you were in LA. Though airports never really feel like a place, do they? Are you leaving or, erm, traveling?"

Wesley paused, a breath in before speaking. Before the entering thought of an ax splintering a door. Before the blunt hit of a paint can. Before her frightened steps... "No, just here for a drink."

"Slow times at Angel Investigations?"

Pause. Breath in. "No. Just-just taking a break is all."

An understanding of the vagueness passed through Giles' face. Relief that congeniality did not need to be at the forefront of this exchange. Moments passed, and glasses lifted to lips to fill the silence. Alcohol to aid the memory licking its wounds in the corner.

"And you?" Wesley asked. "Are you leaving?"

"Yes, going to Eng–going back home."

"I see."

They read each other, bodies giving off empathic words that need not be translated like their volumes of demon texts. Breaking eye contact, and unknowingly, removed their glasses to rub their eyes. Synchronized moments of wanting to rub away what they have seen. To forget what is left behind. To forget violations and primal offenses. To blur what will be delivered tomorrow.

Giles looks at his watch, and lies, "Wesley, I must go. It was good to see you."

"Thank you. Take care, Giles."

He left Wesley behind with a light scrape of his chair and hollow clink of the glass on the table. Giles disappeared into the white, crowded runway, lost among others leaving. Wesley cupped his glass again, lukewarm among people who have to stay in the dark.


End file.
